 kept entirely in abeyance towards his
father by the predisposition to think him always right, simply on the ground
that he was Tom Tulliver's father - was turned into this new channel by his
mother's plaints, and with his indignation against Wakem there began to mingle
some indignation of another sort. Perhaps his father might have helped bringing
them all down in the world, and making people talk of them with contempt; but no
one should talk long of Tom Tulliver with contempt. The natural strength and
firmness of his nature was beginning to assert itself, urged by the double
stimulus of resentment against his aunts, and the sense that he must behave like
a man and take care of his mother.
    »Don't fret, mother,« he said, tenderly. »I shall soon be able to get money:
I'll get a situation of some sort.«
    »Bless you, my boy!« said Mrs. Tulliver, a little soothed. Then, looking
round sadly, »But I shouldn't ha' minded so much if we could ha' kept the things
wi' my name on 'em.«
    Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied reproaches
against her father - her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death -
neutralised all her pity for griefs about table-cloths and china; and her anger
on her father's account was heightened by some egoistic resentment at Tom's
silent concurrence with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity.
She had become almost indifferent to her mother's habitual depreciation of her,
but she was keenly alive to any sanction of it, however passive, that she might
suspect in Tom. Poor Maggie was by no means made up of unalloyed devotedness,
but put forth large claims for herself where she loved strongly. She burst out
at last in an agitated, almost violent tone, »Mother, how can you talk so? as if
you cared only for things with your name on, and not for what has my father's
name too - and to care about anything but dear father himself! - when he's lying
there, and may never speak to us again. Tom, you ought to say so too - you ought
not to let any one find fault with my father.«
    Maggie, almost choked with mingled grief and anger, left the room, and took
her old place on her father's bed. Her heart went out to him with a stronger
movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him.
